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There is nothing quite like a Mexican standoff in Red Dead Online. The seeds of distrust in the other players wandering the Wild West of Red Dead Redemption 2's multiplayer are already deep-rooted. Should another outlaw come riding by, you will often stop, casting a wary eye as their horse slows to a trot. Friend or foe? Passer-by or threat? Or a potential target, of course, should you be playing the brigand yourself.

As it stand in the Red Dead Online beta, there is no passive mode. If you are out in the world, save for your camp with a white flag raised, you are fair game. And people being people, particularly in online video games, the chances are you will be in for a shock should a villain come a knocking.

A chap dressed in fine liveries passes by on the street, waving genially, but still I have my rifle equipped, swinging the camera round as he passes, checking no hands are moving towards holsters. I am right to be wary. A few hours earlier, I had been minding my own business, resting up on the Great Plains. A small group of riders passed by and dismounted. One offered a friendly wave. Maybe they want me to join their posse, I am a lone gunman right now, after all.

But it’s just a ruse, as another player jumps me from behind while I am distracted, wrestling me to the ground before I am hogtied, executed and relieved of the pelts I had stored on my horse. I had to admire the devious creativity. Honour among thieves indeed.

This sense of constant menace fits Red Dead Online’s Wild West world. I imagine as Red Dead Online moves past this beta phase, a passive mode might become a necessity as more and more activities outside of confrontation appear. But for now, that sense of distrust and unease feels appropriate, bringing a certain flavour to an online game that looks to be laying some fine foundations.

Firstly it’s worth pointing out that despite being labelled as a beta, Red Dead Online has run rock-solidly for me on PS4 so far (Xbox One owners suffered issues on the first day that also seem to have been ironed out). It has been a cinch dropping into a session, where up to 32 players can roam Red Dead Redemption 2’s spectacular map. And once in the city of St Denis or mountains of Ambarino, I have yet to suffer much in the way of lag, glitches or server crashes. The one unusual instance I had seemed to have the map drop mission markers for a spell, but was easily fixed with a reset without any loss to my progress.

So the technical foundations are strong, while the world you set out in is similarly beguiling. You begin as you might expect; creating your outlaw from scratch, choosing your gender, features, hair and body type from a suitably comprehensive customisation suite. Then you are placed in a jumpsuit in the Sisika Penitentiary, before being loaded onto the back of a prisoner transport wagon.

On your way to whatever work detail the feds had planned, you are broken out by a trio of men lead by the well-dressed Mr. Horley. Apparently you are wrongly accused, as Horley’s employer Jessica Leclerc tells it. Mrs Leclerc’s husband was murdered in the Blackwater escapade you were locked up for and she wants you to help clear your name and claim her revenge. So she breaks you out, sets you up with a ragtag bunch and sets you to work.

So, yes, Red Dead Online has its own brand of narrative that wraps around the many co-operative missions that are scattered around its map. Indicated by golden icons, you sign up to a mission before being matched with up to three other players (you can also make yourself freely available for players needing pardners). The narrative is more of a framing device than in the exemplary, deep-seated tale of Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, but Rockstar haven’t skimped. There is a tale to unfold here, with its own cast of characters, outcomes and even moral quandaries.

Often you will be pitched into battle with your selected compadres, stealthing through the trees or engaging in brusque shootouts. Often co-operation is required, such as one early mission in which one players must carry a hogtied outlaw on his shoulders while the rest of the team fend off attackers. At the end of each mission, you are often given a choice. In one case you are sent to rescue a young woman thought kidnapped but, as it turns out, she has run away of her own volition with the love of her life. As a group you can vote on your course of action; follow through on your mission, kill the young man and bring the woman back or help the lovebirds escape in a wagon while you fend off attackers.

Your choices will affect your honor level, which can influence the type of missions available to you. Once I had chosen to go the honourable path, the ‘Gunslinger’ storyline opened for me, which will feature more suitable missions than if I had gone a less lawful path. Your honor level also affects what type of ‘stranger’ missions are available to you.

These free-roam missions are all over the map and for a honorable player, will involved retrieving stolen wagons and keeping the peace. More dastardly types will be stealing those wagons, sometimes even chasing down other players in the middle of their missions to disrupt their progress. Once a nearby player is taking on a stranger mission, you may get a notification offering you the chance to cause some mischief. Gunning them down and stealing their mail, for instance. You no good swine.

It’s all good stuff, setting up the basis and tone of a promising and unique multiplayer. And the map Rockstar have created continues to beguile. The entirety of the Red Dead Redemption 2 map is open to you from the beginning. There are a few technical compromises to keep the game running smoothly; a small drop in detail there, a little more mist in the distance there. I am speculating here, but it all seems dynamic, adapting as the game needs to offer the best balance between visuals and performance.

Either way, it’s still a stunningly natural world. While Red Dead Online is definitely better as part of a posse (you have the single-player game after all), there is still plenty to be said for riding trails alone. Even just spending some time to hunt for meat and pelts to be used in crafting or sold to the butcher. If there is an area that Red Dead Online compares unfavourably to the main game, it is in St Denis and more advanced towns. They are still glorious, ornate constructions, of course, but are naturally not as bustling with non-player characters. St Denis stand in all its glory, but can feel oddly ghostly in comparison to the bewildering busyness in Arthur Morgan’s story. It makes sense, of course, leaving room for online players to storm its streets, but worth noting the contrast nonetheless.

Getting out in that world with other players is the main draw then, but Red Dead Online also has a decent suit of more traditional multiplayer modes. You can race your nags, of course, while the Showdown Series pits you in a range of competitive modes against other players. You can either go to locations on the map to take part, or select from the player quick menu by pressing left on the d-pad.

These more recognisable deathmatches and Domination game types aren’t necessarily Red Dead at its best; its weightier control system not as suited to the tight battles. They do make for a decent change of pace, however, while the pick of the bunch so far is the Battle Royale-esque Make It Count.

Make It Count succeeds by adding its own twist to the last player standing style. The map shrinks as you play, but combatants have either a bow and arrow or a handful of throwing knives. This is really good fun, bringing a stealthy and primitive, but altogether quicker, flavour to the Battle Royale staple rather than a focus on scavenging and lengthy match-ups.

Whether it is in free-roam or in the competitive modes, almost everything you do offers up XP. Calming your horse or simply taking them for a ride is as legitimate a way of levelling up as gunning down bad guys. Levelling up, which offers access to different items and unlocks more ‘ability card’ slots, seems pretty swift. This offers a sense of feedback to your actions but, on the other hand, cash and ‘gold’ --the game’s two currencies-- can be a little more hard to come by.

The monetary reward on the early missions can seem fairly meagre, particularly as much of the items in shops have a mark-up on the main game. The gold, which will eventually be purchasable in microtransactions, can also speed up unlocks. One hopes that the balance of Rockstar’s monetisation is carefully considered when Red Dead Online comes out of beta in the weeks or months ahead.

That said, one suspects that as the game progresses, more money-making schemes will become available to players wanting to pretty up their outlaw with a fine new hat. Not to mention that kind of thing that we might expect from Red Dead Online, if its sister tile GTA is anything to go by, with the eventual addition of property ownership and the like.

All of that is to come, of course, and to make a firm judgment on Red Dead Online at this nascent stage is a fool’s errand. But we seem off to a fine start.